Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Tea Review 72 - Assam, Nahorhabi Estate

If you weren't hanging around these parts during March, 2006 then you missed Assam Month. This, as you might have guessed, was a month's worth of posts largely devoted to the unique joys of higher end Assam varieties, for which I've become something of a cheerleader.

I tasted some great teas during that month, as noted at the end of this piece. I also tasted some mediocre ones and even a few lousy ones - no need to name names. Oh, and I tasted a decaf Assam that was downright appalling, but that's generally been the case with any decafs I've sampled.

A while back I got the hankering for some more Assam, so I ordered a few sample packs from Upton, as I'm sometimes wont to do. One of the varieties that really impressed me was Nahorhabi Estate FTGFOP1 SPL CL. In fact, it impressed me so much that I did something I haven't really done before - I ordered a larger package (100 grams).

This was a switch. As I've said, on many occasions, I'm very much in favor of sampling as many varieties of tea as I can. With about 60 varieties of Assam in stock at any given time Upton makes that easy to do.

Nahorhabi Estate may not be the perfect Assam tea, but it's close. It's a very robust variety that brews up very dark in the cup but seems to resist going bitter no matter what. Then again, I didn't really experiment with longer brewing times since I didn't want to waste even one cup of this fine stuff.

Nahorhabi Estate has a surprisingly sweet taste, with perhaps the faintest hint of cinnamon or clove. It's a very smooth taste - with no tannins or bitterness apparent to my coarse tongue.